12/11/2017 – Sister Schroeder's Mission Blog

Laughter is medicine for the soul

This week started out with Sis Taylor and I hanging up Christmas lights (YAY!) and doing exchanges with the other sisters. We did some missionary work and then went shopping for our companions (if you want to buy something for your companion you have to do it on exchanges cause otherwise you’re stuck together like velcro). Sis Gillespie spent too much time trying to decide what to get our companions, but it’s ok cause we found a new investigator earlier that day! Her name is Vicki and her ex-husband is LDS, but she doesn’t have any bad feeling toward the church. She was on pain meds cause she just had surgery, but she was definitely lucid enough to know what she was getting into, I promise!

We went out to lunch with Larry on Wednesday ($1 tacos at the Mexican restaurant!) and he shaved his beard off so it was kinda weird. Now he just looks like an old man and not a happy troll. It’s ok though cause he’s still funny! We went to the McFarlanes for dinner tonight and Anish (a convert of about 2 yrs) was there too and Sis Taylor and I practiced teaching them the Restoration of the Gospel. They said it was good and gave us some things to work on. The best part was when Tim pulled out his mission stuff from Germany and taught us the Gospel of Jesus Christ in German!

On Thursday we saw Larry again, and Diana came with us. They spent a lot of the time talking about the “good ol’ days” when Diana used to run a racetrack with her husband. Our lesson with Larry was on the Atonement and they both said they’re very grateful for it because a lot of their fun in those days needed repenting of. They both make me laugh!

Something really cool happened on Friday in District Meeting. We were talking about people we (the missionaries) are teaching, and who could use some extra prayers, and a man walked in. The room we were in is connected to the gym so we could hear his footsteps echoing across the gym as he walked toward us, so by the time he walked in the door we were all staring at the doorway. We asked if we could help him with anything and he asked if we could pray for him. Elder Pitcher (our zone/district leader) handled it very well and we said a prayer for him and learned that he was a member who hadn’t been to church in about 10 years. Since we had all the missionaries in Ridgecrest in one room we were able to set up an appointment for some of the elders to go see him and help him out. It was so weird and so cool that someone walked into the room needing a prayer right as we talked about prayers. God knows what he’s doing.

We also had a cool experience Saturday night. Sis Taylor and I have both been struggling a little and so has the missionary work in our area so we asked one of our members to give us a blessing. He said yes and asked why we wanted a blessing. We told him we felt like we were struggling and stuff and he ended up giving us a 20 minute pep talk about missionary work and how awesome we are. It was really cool and Sis Taylor and I both felt better after that. The best part though was when I got the actual blessing. It definitely strengthened my testimony of the power of the priesthood because I felt the Spirit so strongly. I started to cry as Bro Rosser spoke because it didn’t feel like it was him talking to me. I could tell that he was saying what Heavenly Father wanted me to know and it felt as though Heavenly Father was speaking directly to me. I am so grateful to be a part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I’m going to end my email today with a few funny things that happened this week:

1) We were at the bishop’s house and we were going to watch day 9 of the #LightTheWorld campaign with him and his family when a Lindsey Stirling video popped up on YouTube. Sis Taylor got super excited because she LOVES Lindsey Stirling, so the bishop played the video for us (I’m not sure if that’s really kosher so please note we did not ask him to). Disappointingly, Lindsey was not dressed modestly. It was so awkward so sit there with the bishop and his whole family (including teenage sons and a 4 yr old daughter) not sure if it was ok that we were watching it while Lindsey danced across the screen in a leotard. It wouldn’t have been so awkward if Sis Washburn hadn’t looked so disappointed and slightly horrified. We texted them later to apologize. They just laughed it off and said it was fine, but it was probably the most awkward 3 minutes in my whole mission.

2) We were at a member’s house and he asked me how I said my name (people always have trouble with Schroeder). When I told him he said “Ah, Jews and their weird pronunciations of stuff” so I said “Actually it’s German”. His response was “Well I was on the wrong end of that joke!”

3) We asked Elder Pitcher to tell us a joke: “What did the wasabi say to the bee?” “Wasabee!”

Ciao,
Sister Schroeder

Photos…

Me and Sis Gillespie shopping: